


The Real Monster

by Ipodsandstars



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bruce Angst, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Banner-centric, Bruce Feels, Depression, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kid Bruce Banner, M/M, Minor Bruce Banner/Tony Stark, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Suicide Attempt, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 21:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2203272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ipodsandstars/pseuds/Ipodsandstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hard to function in a world where everyone seems to hate you for who you are. When you have depression, it’s so much worse</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real Monster

**The Real Monster  
Summary: It’s hard to function in a world where everyone seems to hate you for who you are. When you have depression, it’s so much worse**

 It’s hard to function when everyone in the world seems to hate you. It’s hard to function when the entire world judges you for who you are, it’s hard to see any good people left in the world. You feel like there is nothing left.  
 Sometimes you feel like that there is nowhere to go and you just run in the hopes of an escape out of a seeming endless exit. Depression suffocates you so you feel like you can’t breathe and it sucks, it drives you insane and twists words and thoughts around in your head. Depression takes over every part of your body – it takes control of your brain and it crawls through every sense, every thought you have and sticks to the core; sticks to the happy thoughts as it’s determined to snuff out the light and then take control and change you into a different person and it’s like you’re living in hell, walking through it every single day.

 When depression hits, you’re not the real you. You turn into a person fuelled by paranoia, fuelled by hatred of yourself. It feels like your new task in life is to push everyone away from you and listen to the voices inside your head, and the entire world seems to be mocking you when it really isn’t.    
Sometimes things get better with help, but sometimes it doesn’t – sometimes when you’re on your own, things don’t get better. Things get worse and you choose to be on your own, you choose what seems to be the right thing to do, what seems like the only way out. You choose things that can be seen as a worse way to get out of the situation – you choose ‘the only way out’. You choose to end your life.

 Sometimes people suffering with depression don’t realise that they are not alone.  They don’t realise people want to help and all the sufferers do is focus on the negativity.   
What makes this worse is someone will make a comment on said someone with depression and if the comment is bad and seen or interpreted in that way sufferers will only focus on that.  
Depression is a pain because it changes you, takes away what makes you happy and manipulates you and depression is a pain because it sets out to destroy the people you love…Depression is evil.

You feel like you are the bad person, you feel like everything is your fault and you dig a bigger pit and when you fall inside, it feels like you can’t get out. Some people just hide and don’t want help. Some people just want to try and be normal in the world and then depression develops because of things that had happened in their lives.  
They feel like asking for help is weak and there is no point in helping them – they can’t be helped even though they can. They don’t believe in themselves and it’s hard to see any light in their life because it seemed to have been snuffed out, when in all reality its right there in front of you and depression filters it out.

 Some people don’t see that they are not alone and they never have been but choose to ignore it because of the overwhelming pressure. The voices never seem to go away and it’s hard to concentrate and it gets annoying to some people because they’ve been trying to help. People with depression try to block out feelings, as if trying to forget that they are human. Like they didn’t care about anything but they did, they so did and depression helped make it worse. It feels like your soul is decaying and you force yourself to put on a mask of human emotions, even though inside you feel like you are dying, It’s frustrating for people around you because they want things to go back to ‘normal’, like you’ve just lost track of your happiness and you just need to find it again even though you feel like nothing – like there is no hope for you and you’re trying to convince everyone that tries to help that it’s pointless and hopeless because you don’t matter and that’s the most frustrating thing about depression.

It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something - it’s nothing. And you can’t combat anything. You can’t fill it up. You can’t cover it. It’s just there, pulling the meaning out of everything and soon, you feel like you don’t deserve to be alive anymore.  
 But people with depression are not alone – there are many people out there that go through the same thing every day and though you feel like you’re not human anymore, you find yourself crying over the simplest things because you don’t believe in yourself; you hate yourself that much and you had to work hard to get over these feelings, when you talked about it you felt like people thought you were insane though many people around the world go through what you go through, you feel like shit because it sounds stupid. Every direction seems to be utter bullshit to you so you want to stop, but you can’t.  
Depression is like a battle; you can either win or lose it and everything hurts but you learn you’re not alone and sometimes, people don’t get better. It’s a sad case because you’ve tried everything and it feels like you can’t succeed.

Sometimes it’s a long, long road onto the path of good things again – to beat the voices in your head and ignoring what people say about you. Sometimes people are successful in recovering from depression.  
 But sometimes, it’s always there.  
 Bruce Banner had developed depression over the years because of everything he has and had been through which was not his fault. His family all hated him… well, what was left of them. He hadn’t seen or heard from his cousin Jennifer Walters in years and his father was in a mental hospital because he went batshit crazy and killed Rebecca Banner -  his wife and Bruce’s mother.

He grew up with no friends because they wanted nothing to do with a ‘fucked up nerd’. He went on, several years later to get involved because he loved science. His father had always thought that Bruce’s genes had mutated and he was a monster, so he beat Bruce. It seemed funny really, that science would make him a monster.   
 Now Bruce’s father was right in his son’s eyes when the Other Guy came along. He truly was a monster now and everyone ran and hid in fear of a monster that destroys. He’d never been treated as a human since then, he was just used as a power source – a weapon. A tool that would be locked up until they needed to use him again.

Bruce got paranoid, pushing away everyone to get them to stay away and stay safe. By everyone I mean Betty who never went looking for him, even though they loved each other. Bruce wanted Betty to be safe; he wanted Betty to be loved and cared for and have a happy life without him, even though they both loved each other. He wanted her to be loved and cared for by someone that wasn’t a monster.   
 Betty made him feel like a human for a while, like he wasn’t a monster but it didn’t last. How could someone change for the better when the whole world seemed to hate you?  
He listened to everyone else, he listened to the voices and they told him what to do. They told him to run and never return, to stay away from everyone. To stay away from cities and stay away from people he could easily hurt.

Helping people in Calcutta went pretty well for a while. Bruce liked helping people, he liked seeing them smile and he thought he was doing pretty well until SHIELD came along. He was by himself, he tried to do something good and then they had to fuck things over by looking for him. It turned out; they’d always been tracking him   
They wanted him to be in a team they were forming, called the Avengers and ignored him when he said he wanted nothing to do with them. He’d been doing so well lately… He’d been doing so well until they came along and he hadn’t used the gun once since his failed suicide attempt when he hulked out and the green bastard saved him.   
 Depression does that. It makes you feel constant negativity about yourself and to depression sufferers; suicide seemed to be a way to take away the pain. It was like a permanent solution to a temporary problem and to Bruce it was like a failure – he was a failure for not being able to kill himself and in a weird sort of way, the Other Guy had given him a second chance at life. Without the Other Guy, he’d have probably shot himself in the head.

 So the Other Guy knew Bruce was worth everything… yet the man didn’t believe in himself. Bruce thought suicide was the good option because it gave him the chance to save everyone… from himself.   
Bruce knew they only wanted him for the Other Guy; it didn’t need to take a genius to figure that out. He knew Nick only wanted the Hulk, despite everything he said about tracking down the Tesseract.

They had given him his own special ‘room’, but it wasn’t a room – it was a cage.   
 Bruce’s mind still reeled from the events several hours before, when Natasha first showed up after tracking him down. Bruce had rocked a cradle and said  
“I don’t always get what I want.”  
 He was sad about it, depression had changed him completely. Yes he had the Other Guy but Bruce could see no way of having what he wanted – a family, friends who treated him with respect and made him feel human, he wanted children and a future. He wanted love, something he never really had.  
Depression kept the bad thoughts afloat and running through his head as a constant reminder of what a ‘fuck up’ he was. Depression was just another bully, a tough one to face because he was always there, taunting people and making their life a living hell.  Depression makes choices for you that you wouldn’t normally make, it’ll make choices for you that you will regret and Bruce didn’t have any say in the decisions. His depression was a monster – depression IS a monster.

Whenever Bruce was around Tony, he tried to stay calm and cool and not freak out because of what a dangerous game Tony was playing, Bruce wanted to play it safe and kept to himself and yet he stayed in Tony’s company because he oddly enjoyed it. Tony treated him like he deserved to be treated, not how everyone else was treating him and it was nice.  
When the Battle of New York was over, everyone started to go their different ways, the depression started up again because Bruce realised he’d be on his own again and he was sad about that, but Tony noticed. Tony always noticed different things about Bruce because he cared and he loved his best friend.

Tony knew about Bruce’s past and he couldn’t just let him wander around again like he was nothing so he did what anyone else would do. Tony gave Bruce a place to stay – his own place to stay out of the public eye where Tony would come to hang out to make sure he was okay and Bruce liked that, Tony cared and nobody ever did that before.    
 Bruce was surprised that he and Tony got along because he knew how much of an asshole Tony Stark could be, but they clicked.   
Because of Tony, Bruce didn’t feel like a monster again, with Tony’s help Bruce was starting to get better and it was going to be a long road, but with support he could make it. Tony wasn’t budging when Bruce tried to push him away. He stayed in support of his best friend and Bruce didn’t know why and how he did it, but Tony did.

It was a long road ahead.

 So when Tony sent Bruce a box, the scientist wondered what the billionaire had sent him this time and when he opened it, he smiled a little  
It was a simple metal bracelet Tony had designed to expand with the Hulk. It was no surprise that the man, who had made his own element, could make Bruce something like this. To make things better, Bruce noticed a few words were inscribed on the outside of the bracelet and he studied them closely, his hands shaking violently.

The metal bracelet had the words ‘You are not alone’ on it and in that moment, Bruce knew he wasn’t a monster.  
 **Depression was.**

**Author's Note:**

> I suffer with depression myself and it's hard, I just thought I'd tell you guys reading this, that you are not alone. It's hard, but it gets better


End file.
